Posted on by lhl
  • Dominey on Flash MovieClip Tweening Prototypes
  • The Panopticon Singularity – marching towards ubiquitous surveillance
  • Who told Dean to scream for lock-down, TCPA computing? – The Register does some digging on Declan McCullagh’s claims

    So there we have it: Dean wasn’t advocating a national ID card, nor was he blithely inviting smart card vendors to breach citizens’ privacy even further. However, it was remarkably ill-advised of him to advocate locking down the PC “at the edge of the network” without examining the implications for the consumer, or even the software industry.

  • Papal blessing for break-dancers – downrocking in His name
  • Power Rangers = Joshua Micah Marshall asks whether the Bush administration has created a new American empire or weakened the old one; some very good points

    Conservative ideologues, in calling for an international order in which America would have a statelike monopoly on coercive force, somehow forgot what makes for a successful state. Stable governments rule not by direct coercion but by establishing a shared sense of allegiance. In an old formula, domination gives way to hegemonybrute force gives way to the deeper power of consent. This is why the classic definition of the state speaks of legitimate force. In a constitutional order, government accepts certain checks on its authority, but the result is to deepen that authority, rather than to diminish it. Legitimacy is the ultimate force multiplier, in military argot. And if your aim is to maintain a global order, as opposed to rousting this or that pariah regime, you need all the force multipliers you can get.